The
Mummy Returns:
"In The Mummy Returns, there aren't many shots that we didn't have
something to do with," said Ed Kramer, ILM's sequence supervisor
on The Mummy Returns (which has grossed more than $200 million at the
box office). "We were involved in more than 350 shots, creating everything
on Silicon Graphics O2 systems backed with SGI 2000 series servers. SGI
technology was an essential part of everything we created and rendered."

Creating a living,
breathing Imhotep (the mummy himself) was top priority.

"We had to create
digital skin to cover the surface of the muscles, and we wrote simulation
software on the O2 systems that would allow the surface skin to react
to the way the muscles were moving and rippling underneath," explained
Kramer. "Those muscles, in turn, were reacting to how the bones were
moving and supporting them."

Director Steven Sommers
wanted plenty of holes in Imhotep's body so audiences could see through
to the background, proving that this was not an actor wearing a mummy
suit.

"We had to systematically
remove lungs or parts of his head so that we could see right into him,"
Kramer continued. "We even had to create his brain, because there's
a big chunk of his head missing, and when he moves, his brain has to slosh
inside his skull. That required calculations based on the volume of a
brain and the collision between the brain and the skull that it's floating
in. We also had to paint an incredible number of texture maps, transparency
maps, bump maps and displacement maps to create that rotted flesh."

Other CGI challenges
included a battle sequence containing more than 10,000 jackal headed Anubis
warriors, and in some scenes 40,000 warriors were needed. Digital duplication
tricks weren't of much use: each warrior had to be animated and rendered
individually for continuity among the shots in the sequence. "Any
time you see Imhotep, the hordes of pygmy or soldier mummies or the popular
WWF wrestler, The Rock, as the Scorpion King, that's ILM's CGI, all created
on SGI systems," said Kramer.

Pearl Harbor:
ILM's visual effects work for Pearl Harbor (which has surpassed $200 million
at the box office) included three main sequences: the aerial tour de force
of the Battle of Britain; the devastating Pearl Harbor attack, including
the all-digital ships in Battleship Row; and many shots in the Tokyo raid
sequence at the movie's climax.

"In the Battle
of Britain, we did all the dog-fighting shots using digital planes and
explosions," said Michael Bauer, ILM's CG supervisor on Pearl Harbor.
"We even generated the background plates for many of those scenes,
cutting together pieces of sky and ocean to complement director Michael
Bay's choreography. For the Pearl Harbor battle, some shots were almost
entirely computer graphics. We digitally created Battleship Row with 3D
models of ships based on the original 1941 blueprints. We made all the
battleships, the water that they're floating on, all the smoke plumes
and the giant smoke events, digital airplanes, the tracers and the tracer
smoke coming from the airplanes, and the bullet hits on the water and
on the battleships. Where they filmed one or two planes coming through,
we'd populate the sky with our digital planes. We also made a whole library
of digital sailors to complement the stunt sailors."

A.I.:
ILM's involvement in A.I. dates back to around the time of the first Jurassic
Park, when Dennis Muren, one of the two visual effects supervisors on
A.I., briefly discussed some ideas with Stanley Kubrick. ILM did not hear
much more about the project until it was announced that Steven Spielberg
would be taking over after the death of the legendary Kubrick. ILM's work
on A.I. began well over a year ago, with the initial modeling, animation
and lighting work all done on Silicon Graphics O2 workstations using SGI
2000 series systems as render servers. A fair amount of code, mostly plug-ins
and shaders, was also written on the O2 systems.

"A.I. had one
of the broadest ranges of visual effects that I've ever been exposed to,"
said Doug Smythe, ILM associate visual effects supervisor for A.I. "We
did literally every kind of shot you can think of, including simple wire
removal, blink removal and digital creature work of all kinds; digital
enhancement of live action; all the CG eyeballs and prosthetics in the
Flesh Fair shantytown; complete digital environments such as the excavation;
combinations of miniatures with live action and computer graphics such
as Rouge City; and, of course, the furry teddy bear. ILM worked on a just
under 200 shots, but they were unusually long shots, which was dictated
by the style of the editing. Out of the two-hour and 15-minute film, about
45 minutes are visual effects shots running 1,000 or even 2,000-plus frames
long."

Jurassic
Park 3:
ILM's groundbreaking visual effects used in the original Jurassic Park
earned the company an Academy Award in 1993. For 1997's The Lost World:
Jurassic Park, ILM was again nominated for an Academy Award for visual
effects. This year, Jurassic Park III, featuring ILM's dinosaurs and effects
created on Silicon Graphics O2 workstations, grossed more than $50 million
on its opening weekend.

Model development
at ILM of Jurassic Park III began well over a year ago. ILM then completed
more than 400 2D and 3D effects shots using Silicon Graphics O2 workstations,
primarily running Softimage for animation. The flesh simulation application
within an ILM proprietary dynamics engine, originally developed for The
Mummy and written on the O2 systems, was adapted for dinosaur skin simulation.
Some of the "creatures," as ILM's Tim McLaughlin, creature supervisor
for Jurassic Park III calls the dinosaurs, were based on the designs of
the previous films while some were new or totally rebuilt. More than 60
shots featured flesh or cloth simulations (used, for example, for the
pteranodon's wings).

"There were a
half-dozen hero-style creatures and another five or six that were used
in background shots," McLaughlin said. "T-rex, which was prominently
featured in both Jurassic Park and The Lost World, came back for a cameo
in Jurassic Park III. We had to take a look at the dinosaur in terms of
how it was structured: what its patch structure was, what its chaining
rig (animation control) was, and how it needed to perform in the new movie.
We knew we wanted to do flesh simulation -- flesh, bone and muscle --
on most of the featured creatures. We had to resurface the entire T-rex,
using what we had originally created on SGI systems as the basis of a
template, and then repainted and rerigged the creature."

Planet of the Apes:
ILM was involved in the creation of various sequences seen throughout
Planet of the Apes, including the setup of the entire initial space sequence,
which featured a practical model shot of the mother spaceship The Oberon,
a CG model of the space pod and the creation of a tsunami effect within
the nebula that sends the pod -- and actor Mark Wahlberg -- back in time.
Planet of the Apes soared to a nonholiday-weekend record of $69.6 million
gross for its opening weekend.

"The tsunami
was a very interesting effect because we were asked to create what director
Tim Burton called 'a shockwave in space,'" said Thomas Hutchinson,
CG supervisor for ILM on Planet of the Apes. "He didn't want it to
look like anything he'd ever seen before, so it couldn't be light pulses
or anything like that. It was quite a challenge to come up with, and the
R&D early on was very exciting. There were only about 10 shots, but
it was a unique little tidbit that we did all with Maya and RenderMan
on SGI systems."

The majority of ILM's
almost five-month production schedule was compositing work, augmenting
numerous battle sequences with additional apes. "They could only
suit up so many actors as apes, so we did a lot of what's called tiling
in compositing," said Hutchinson. "They shoot a section of actors
in ape costume, then move them over in the field, change their positions
and then shoot them in various bits and pieces. We edit all the footage
together and composite one big sequence of many apes into one shot."

NewTek Announces
and Ships LightWave 7.0(by digitalmediafx.com) NewTek today announced and began shipping
a new version of its LightWave 3D program - LightWave 7.0. NewTek also
announced that LightWave was now being used by ESC, the company behind
the visual effects for The Matrix sequels, including The Matrix: Reloaded.

NewTek lists the following
as new features in version 7.0, an upgrade from LightWave 6.5:

LightWave 7.0 is available
immediately for a suggested retail price of US$2495. LightWave 7.0 is
available for Macintosh OS 9 and OS X-native, and for Windows 98, 2000,
Me and NT4, and is running on AMD, DecAlpha and Intel processors. Product
is available through NewTek's channel of authorized resellers and distributors
worldwide.

In related news, Advanstar
announced the soon availability of LightWave Applied, Version 6.5 &
7.0, the newest book from Joe Tracy (dFX publisher), Dave Jerrard,
Jen Hachigian, and the epic software group. For more information on the
book, click
here.